


Traditions

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2016 [20]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Christmas Story, Civil War what Civil War, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Not Beta Read, Post Avengers, Pre All The Movies That Made Me Hate Steve, Prompt Fic, SO MUCH FLUFF, Team as Family, Tony Needs a Hug, Wishlist_Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 16:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8997868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: In which the Avengers have more Christmas traditions than they maybe expect.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Riotousorder, who asked for Tony-centric Christmas fluff. It's a tiny bit angsty, too, because it's Tony, but i hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Happy holidays, people, or, for all the non-Christians out there, happy random weekend where everything is closed because of some weird holiday. Do you and have a good time, mkay?

+

Tony has two Christmas settings. 

One of them is his public setting, the other is his non-public setting. Both have been around for a long time. 

Christmas Setting #1, public, is the one where he gets drunk on hard liquor before he gets to the party, then switches to eggnog and champagne, a supermodel on each arm, hauling people under mistletoes indiscriminately, wearing someone’s stolen Christmas hat and making crude jokes about what people can give him for a present. 

Spoiler: it usually involves sexual favors of some description. 

By morning, he’ll be hungover, Pep will look at him like he killed Baby Jesus and everyone will hate him, except for the tabloids, which will make a mint off him by only proclaiming to hate him. 

Christmas. Such a spiritual and happy time. 

Christmas Setting #2, non-public, is the one where he stops after getting drunk on hard liquor, locks himself in his lab, forbids Dummy from playing Christmas songs and pretends nothing is happening, nothing is going on, it’s just a random day in December and fuck everything and everyone who is having fun tonight. 

He tends to pass out around midnight, sleep through Christmas morning and hate the entire world afterwards while Pep stares at him with pity and the world keeps turning. 

All in all, it’s the better setting of the two. 

There used to be a #3, which involved a stuffy family dinner with Howard and Maria and a half hour spent in a sitting room, staring at the tree put up by a rotating roster of world famous designers and architects, before Ana came to whisk him away to bed. 

‘Bed’ was their code for her and Jarvis’ room, with the crooked, small, real tree that they set up together, hung with all kinds of weird keepsakes and mementos. The foot was buried under piles of presents, most of them for Tony, immaculately wrapped in garish paper with big, poofy bows. They made a mess of unwrapping, drank too sweet tea and ate cookies until they were all sick. Then Ana would pull out her favorite Christmas book and read to Tony until he fell asleep on Jarvis’ lap. 

He’d wake up in his bed the next morning, all his childish, wonderful new toys piled up at the foot of his bed and he wouldn’t stop grinning for days. 

It’s been a long time since #3. He and Jarvis tried, for a few years after Ana was gone, but it was never the same and eventually, they just stopped. 

In conclusion: Tony? Not really a Christmas person. 

Unfortunately, the Avengers seem to not have gotten that memo, which is a bit worrisome because the tabloids have been recycling his Best Of Christmas Hits for the past week and you’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to hear about his past faux pas’, but. 

Whatever. 

So it happens that on the morning of the 24th, there is a knock on his bedroom door, followed by another and another and finally, Natasha curses loudly in Russian and lets herself in. 

JARVIS is a traitor. 

Tony, who went to bed about three hours ago, pulls the sheets higher over his head.

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead!” Natasha chirps. It’s creepy.

“Is this the return of Natashalie?” he demands, eyes still closed. The last time she was in his bedroom, she told him she’d spend her last birthday however she wanted and then made innocent sex-eyes at him. Instead of answering, she grabs the bottom of his blanket and whips it away. 

He squawks. She cackles. “Get up,” she orders, “Bruce is making breakfast.”

Risking one eye, he squints at her. “Bruce makes breakfast every day. Why does it warrant B&E today?”

“Because it’s Christmas and we have things to do.”

“Are you,” he asks in a low, terrified voice, “are you a _Christmas person_ , Ms. Romanov?” He shudders. 

She whacks him on the ass because six months of living together have blurred any lines they ever had between them and somehow, somewhen, Natasha has decided she likes Tony. He still doesn’t know why or when or who, but he lives in terror of her affections. Sometimes she calls him Russian pet names. 

“No. But we are all here and we are all doing something, because the alternative is depressing.”

Then she hauls him out of bed by his ankle. 

+

“Okay,” Bruce announces an hour later, leaning back in his chair, rubbing his food baby. “That was pretty much the only Christmas tradition I got.”

He presses his lips briefly into a thin line and none of them ask, because they all know enough about his childhood to not pry. “Big breakfast, lots of hot chocolate. What’s next?”

Tony, staring mournfully into his empty coffee mug, frowns. “Wait. What?”

“We’re working our way through Christmas traditions,” Natasha informs him, primly. Isn’t she Russian? Don’t they do Christmas in, like January? Or is that a religion, not the entire country?

Also, he is suddenly very glad Thor is not around. The culture clash would make this whole experience either hilarious or a complete nightmare. Let Jane explain the fat man in the chimney to him. 

Steve shrugs, half hiding behind his hot chocolate. “Uhm. My mom and Bucky and his family, we… years we could afford a tree, we always bought and decorated it together on the 24th.”

Clint makes a face. “We already got that huge-ass tree set up in the common, though.” Paid for and delivered all shiny and sparkly, as per good old Stark tradition. It should totally count as Tony’s contribution to this mess. Howard would be so proud. 

“We could set up another,” Bruce offers. 

“Two trees look stupid,” Clint counters. 

“So we set it up somewhere else.”

“Tony’s place?” Clint asks. “Would you and Pepper mind? You don’t have one up there, yet.”

Of course not. Tony never has a tree anymore. Not without Jarvis and Ana to do it right. And he’s not putting up a designer monstrosity where he actually has to look at it. 

“Pep went home,” he tells them.

“Without you?”

He rolls his eyes. “She can escape the paparazzi if she’s careful. I go with her, it’s a mess. We do this every year, it’s fine. Besides, one of her brothers spawned again, she wants to see the sprog.”

He shrugs his shoulders because neither #1 nor #2 require Pepper to be there. It’s all fine. It’s good. At least this way, she doesn’t stop his flow, or anything. 

He notices the looks going around the table, but pretends not to. “So fine, whatever, invade my living space. Not like you’ve already taken over my tower or anything.” He grins to make it a joke. No go. “I’ll be in my lab if you need me.”

Before he makes it three steps, Natasha has blocked his escape. “All of us, Tony. That was the deal.”

“To which I never agreed, or was even informed of.”

“Oh, come on,” Clint wheedles. “It’ll be fun. We can cover Cap in tinsel and tie him to the top of the tree.”

“Hey!”

Tony checks on Natasha. The flinty look in her eyes says she’ll put him in the ground if he makes Clint beg. 

“Okay. Whatever.”

They get a tree and a plethora of decorations delivered because none of them actually own a single Christmasy thing. Well, Tony does, but. No. Just no. 

Steve complains about the cost, but Tony shuts him up by threatening to order more and while Spangles and the Black Widow look like idiots trying to put up an eight foot tree, Clint disappears into the kitchen and comes back with three giant bowls of popcorn and a sewing kit he got from god knows where.

“Popcorn garlands. We used to make a ton of those at the circus every year. It was the only decoration that didn’t run the risk of breaking or being stolen.”

He hands out string, needles and bowls and before long, Tony finds himself humming along to _Last Christmas_ and making freaking popcorn garlands, squished between Clint and Bruce on one of the couches. 

It’s hot and the popcorn crumbs get everywhere and he keeps pricking his finger and it smells awful, but when Clint ties all their ends together and they have enough garland to hogtie Steve, it’s actually kind of fun. Mostly because the giant lump is actually too considerate and nice to just rip through the string, so he stands there and just lets them wrap him up. Tony has JARVIS take pictures.

Eventually, once freed, Natasha shoos their fearless leader away to make them more hot chocolate and tea and sets the tree up by herself. Then she grabs the tray of mugs from him and shoves him at the decorations. 

“Your job,” she tells him and waltzes right back out with their chocolate. She returns ten minutes later, passing out mugs and, “Oh my god, this is the best thing I have ever tasted, what is in there?”

The assassin smirks. “Chilli flakes and coffee liqueur,” she tells him and slurps her own. 

Even Bruce, who is on a strict no-booze diet because of the Green Guy, sips his. 

Tony feels warm and tingly down to his toes. 

+

It takes them all afternoon to cover the giant tree in ornaments, lights and finally, popcorn. By the time Steve has escaped Clint’s attempts to duct tape him and they put up the star on top, it’s almost dark again. They order Chinese and settle in to watch shitty kids’ movies, which is as close as Natasha gets to a tradition. 

Tony snacks on leftover popcorn and realizes that he’s a) not drunk yet and b) having fun. 

So fucking weird. 

By the time the credits of the second movie roll, everyone is mellow, stuffed and tired and he thinks they might call it a night, finally, when Clint suddenly rouses and asks, “Dude, what’s yours?”

“Huh?”

He pokes Tony in the shoulder. “We’ve done Bruce’s breakfast, Nat’s dinner, Steve and my decorating, but we don’t have your tradition, yet.”

Tony shrugs. “Meh. Don’t have any.”

Which is kind of pitiful, when you consider even the government-raised assassin has Christmas traditions and you don’t. “Unless you count getting roaring drunk as a tradition.”

Steve sits up straighter. “Surely Howard and your mother – “

For once, someone thinks to stop him before he puts his foot in. Bruce grabs his arm and shakes his head. Steve deflates and Tony decides he loves Brucie even more. 

“Nothing at all?” Natasha asks. 

He opens his mouth to say no, nothing, but – Tony lies easily. Almost as easily as the trained spies sitting close by, but he finds he can’t lie about this. Can’t open his mouth and claim that Ana and Jarvis and the Christmas they used to magic up for him were nothing. 

Instead, he sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “Not for a long time, okay. And I don’t – “ Shit. He hates this. Hates being such a fuck-up and so damn vulnerable. He wishes Pep were here, but she never is. Not on Christmas. It’s her family time and Tony has no place there. 

“You don’t have to,” Steve offers, quietly. 

Pity from the man who spent seventy years on ice. Fuck. 

“It’s stupid anyway,” Tony counters. Because it is. He’s not six years old anymore. Stark men are made of iron. 

Clint snorts. “Yeah, and popcorn garlands aren’t.”

That earns him a chuckle. 

Tony kind of hates all of them for not being assholes about this. Because – “Christmas is gala time. Howard and Maria always went out after dinner and Jarvis, the human one, and his wife used to take me to their room for a _real_ Christmas. Ana was from Germany, they do Christmas on the 24th there. So we’d do presents and then she’d read us a Christmas story until I fell asleep.” He laughs to himself. “Their tree was so fucking ugly, and it was fantastic, because Jarvis was the neatest person I ever met and he hated disorder, but their tree was an unholy mess.”

He stops himself, looks at the others, and finds only smiles and grins instead of… whatever he expected.

“So,” Clint hedges, “Christmas stories? We doing story time? Anyone know any?”

JARVIS pipes up from the ceiling. “I am sure I can find several hundred, if you would like me to, Mr. Barton.”

“Actually-“

Tony clamps his mouth shut, but it’s already too late.

“Actually?” Bruce echoes.

Oh, what the hell. Even if it all goes belly up now, this is already the best Christmas Tony has had in years.

“Uhm, JARV, can you have Dummy bring up the box from my lab? You know the one?”

He thinks there is something warm in the AI’s voice when he assures Tony that, yes, he can. 

A minute later, the elevator pings and Dummy rolls out, a box carefully clasped in his claw. He puts it on Bruce’s lap and chirrups a pleased hello.

Tony leans over to pet him briefly before telling him, “You can stay here, but no fire extinguishers. Best behavior, got it, buddy?”

“Sir, if I may,” JARVIS interrupts. “The bots were in the process of their own little Christmas party in the lab. Maybe U and Butterfingers?”

Tony sighs. “Sure, let them up.” 

Natasha chuckles and when the elevator opens again to reveals the other two bots, she laughs out loud. U, the only one with two limbs, somehow managed to put a Christmas hat on himself, although god knows where he even found it. Tony suspects Big Brotherly intervention. 

The bots chirps their hellos, get their usual pets and cuddles in while the Avengers watch and then settle around the loose circle of couches and chairs, waiting. 

Tony sighs, stops stalling and opens the box. 

There’s not a lot in it. Just a few keepsakes. Things he saved from the manor before he ran. Jarvis’ favorite tie, one of Ana’s hairpins. Maria’s favorite book. A few diaries. Aunt Peggy’s cards and letters to him. 

And, at the very bottom, a book of Christmas stories for children.

Tony pulls it out, closes the box and passes it to Dummy, who wheels it into Tony’s bedroom obediently. Without destroying anything. 

Holding up the book, he asks, “Who wants?”

“You should,” Steve offers promptly. “It’s yours.”

Butterfinger chirps agreement. Little guy loves it when Tony talks. 

Okay then. Okay.

“You’re just lazy,” Tony sniffs and cracks the book open in the middle, where a handmade bookmark keeps a dead woman’s place. It’s blue, the bookmark, with stick figures drawn on it and _Tony_ with a backwards N spelled out in one corner. 

He slips it into the very back of the book, to keep it safe, and finds the beginning of the marked story. 

Then he clears his throat and starts to read. 

+

**Author's Note:**

> Come tumble with me [here](http://www.wordsformurder.tumblr.com/).


End file.
